Growing up Polish, becoming American

At a recent annual meeting of the Polish American Historical Society in Boston, I was invited to join a panel of poets reading verse about their experience of "growing up Polish-American." I did not, I grew up Polish... or maybe not even that... In my remarks, I talked about my immigrant experience and about my grandparents and family history affected by the war. I was born and raised in Warsaw, but I trace my roots to eastern borderlands of Poland.

My compatriot, Czeslaw Milosz, whose footsteps I followed from the Polish Kresy, north-eastern Borderlands, to the Far West of California, often wrote about the spiritual richness arising from the clash of cultures in areas where Poles, Belorussians, Lithuanians, Jews, and “Tutejsi” – people from here, have lived for centuries. After the conquerors of America returned home with some new root vegetables and the new plantings spread around Europe, they shared a cuisine, eating not only the local blincy, bliny, nalesniki, or pancakes, but also placki kartoflane, or latkes…

Many languages, many religions: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, even Islam, represented by the Tatar settlement of Kruszyniany, established in the 17th century by a Muslim captain of cavalry Samuel Murza Krzeczkowski, his soldiers and some other Tatar officers were granted land there by the Polish king. My grandmother’s village of Bielewicze is not far from there, and not far from the ancient old-growth forests, the "puszcza" of Bialowiez. Her name was Nina Niegierysz. Her father, my great grandfather came from somewhere in Ukraine, and bought a large estate in Mieleszki, in the Voivodeship of Bialystok. I have a picture of my great grandfather as a boy in Odessa. Who were these people? Memories are lost in the turmoil of history. Even the birth certificate of my father was burnt during the war.

Thanks to this part of my family, I’m not even fully Polish. My grandmother married a "local" man, Wincenty Trochimczyk, and this is how I got my Belorussian last name. She did not speak or write Polish; having dropped out of high school to work on the family farm, she wrote in Russian alphabet and spoke to her Polish grandchildren in Belorussian. My father, Aleksy, started learning Polish at six, and spoke with the Eastern borderlander accent, pronouncing the consonant H differently from CH.

My mother Henryka Wajszczuk was born in Baranowicze, in Nowogrodek Voivodeship (now Belarus, previously Soviet Union, but Poland before the war), and her family belonged to impoverished Polish landed gentry. An online family tree is maintained by an American cousin, Waldemar Wajszczuk. The family roots go back to the 16th century and there are many branches spread out across the world.

The extended family includes such memorable characters as my mother's uncle Dominik Hordziejewski, who used to ride in a horse buggy across his vast estate to the famous lake of Switez or to Nowogrodek church, but who lost his mind after the Soviets took over and forcibly resettled him and his family to Gdansk Oliva. They had 24 hours to pack the remnants of their possessions in less than half of a railroad car. Try squeezing a manor house into that! Of his herds, he was left with one cow. He spent his last years dressed in his best coat and top hat, grazing this one cow in the parks and by the roads of his new city. Before the war, he had shepherds doing that on his estate...

My Polish grandmother Maria Wasiuk gave me my first name, which I changed to my childhood nickname of Maja only in California, after a decade of being annoyed by being called Ma-ri-a, like the heroine of the West Side Story, an alien name for a stranger... My parents met after the war, while studying and helping rebuilt the destroyed Warsaw.

Thus, I am a hybrid, urban and rural, sophisticated and simple. I am primarily a highly sophisticated and educated city-dweller. I spent 10 out of every 12 months in the capital of Poland, Warsaw, studying music, literature, and history, attending theater and opera premieres, art openings, and exclusive receptions. Looking back, I would call myself a "fashionista" or a "social butterfly" in high heels and fancy dresses. But for the two months of the summer I was transformed into a country girl working in the fields, picking mushrooms and berries in the forest, making hay, carrying water from the well, or cooking strawberry preserves on a wood stove. For some reason, when remembering my childhood, those summer days glow with happiness never experienced in the most sophisticated environments of rainy Warsaw.

The loss of the native land, vividly experienced by all emigrants, is a frequent theme of my poetry, often juxtaposing the old with the new. Here's a poem inspired by my childhood in the meadows of Bielewicze, an idyllic land, remembered during a walk in the Big Tujunga Wash...

Dragonfly Days

The California dragonflies are
as they should be – orange,
enormous, flying in formation
above green algae blooming
in the winter stream.

A hairy bug looks for a crevice
to hide his ugliness,
straight from the pages
of a horror book or a painting
by Hieronymus Bosch –
a creature that could have been,
but is not.

A blue heron floats down.
His majestic wings beat slowly
until he finds a reedy alcove
for an al fresco dinner. Transfixed,
I watch his shape-shifting ways –
a cruel flash of movement erupting
from a graceful silhouette
standing still as a priceless etching
amidst the rocks.

Once, I knew such dark-winged herons
watching us scare away the fish
from their river with our childish giggles.
Red-billed storks picked their lunch
of frogs and crickets from the trail
of freshly cut grass, its straight rows
measured by the motion
of my uncle’s scythe
across the meadow.

Like long-legged pets,
storks followed the man
who fed them. They paid no notice
to a silent child trying to catch
a butterfly in her small hands,
watching bright blue dragonflies
over a ditch filled with rainwater
and forget-me-nots.

Blue and orange, the dragonflies
still haunt my memories, hovering
above the smooth surface
of long forgotten stream,
beneath the tranquil expanse
of high noon sky.
 
The key word is “once” – the pastime is one of comparison: then and now, there and here, what was and will not ever be and what is and will continue to be with a full weight of the presence. This poem was included in my first book of poetry, Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden (2008).

The sense of loss and distance is also making an appearance in the poem about birch trees, my favorite of all. There were birch trees near my grandparents houses in both Bielewicze and Trzebieszow. My parents planted them, with oaks, in their country garden on the outskirts of Warsaw. Inspired by a painting by Steven West depicting the aspen, the poem includes a paraphrase of a title of a book on Russian “bieriozka” letters written on birch bark in old Russian villages. I got the book from my father, Aleksy, who had worked as Russian translator and electrical engineer and spent over 20 years in Persian Gulf, Iraq and the Emirates.


A White Letter

The aspens look at me. The eyes of white birch
reproach: "Where are you, why are you there?
Not here, with us?" Yes, I was supposed to keep
collecting yellow leaves each fall.
The branches sang softly, trembled
in the slightest breeze, anxious to fly away.
Birches shed their bark in broad strips and sheets
I could use to write love letters and stories
of olden times, but did not, seduced
by the allure of paper and keyboard –
the tools of memory that keeps the eyes
of the birch trees wide open as they whisper
I will send you a birch bark letter -
“я тебе берёзку пошлю…”*


The poem was written for an exhibition of paintings at APC Gallery in Torrance, and published in a chapbook by Poets on Site of Pasadena. Perhaps poetry can only grow "on site" - somewhere it takes root?

When looking for a place of my own in California, I picked Sunland - with its village atmosphere and friendly neighbors it reminded me of those villages of my childhood where everyone knew whose granddaughter I was... The beauty of Sunland's landscape - our gardens and mountains, the colors, the sunlight - does not cease to astound me. It feels all the more vivid right after coming back from wintry, snowy, beautiful, historical but ultimately quite grey Boston.

__________________________________________________________

Photos of Sunland and Big Tujunga Wash by Maja Trochimczyk

Happy New Year 2011!

Among hundreds of wishes in my inbox this year (Christmas, Holiday, Birthday and New Year's Wishes), I found some fantastic animated ones, and the following one in Serbian from Mira Mataric, a wonderful Serbian-American poet:

Živeli zdravo, radosno, radoznalo, raskošno, razumno i razborito, povremeno se okliznite u avanturu i ne zažalite za onim što odlazi!

I do not know exactly what it means, but it certainly looks good! I also liked very much the wishes from two Polish friends, "Happy New Year Everybody" from Krysia Kaszubowska and "Happy New Year" from Eva Matysek Mazur. It seems that paper cards have been replaced with lovely animated ones these days, just as books are slowly giving way to electronic "reads" on things like I-Pads, Kimbles and other electronic book readers. I like cleaning the frost flowers off the electronic window to see the village covered in snow outside - just like the villages and the frozen flowers of my Polish childhood. But I like electronic snow much more than the real one, and that's why I live in Southern California...



At a recent Haiku Party of the Southern California Haiku Study Group, chaired by Debbie Kolodji at the welcoming home of Wendy and Tom Garen, I read two new haiku celebrating the change of the year, from the tumultuous Year of the Tiger to the placid Year of the Rabbit. These are my first poems of the year, expressing the hope for a serene and content future, or, at least, some rest. The first one got accidentally printed on four lines. The white rabbit is the one from Monty Python, of course. Enjoy!

Happy New Year! Dosiego Roku!

Christmas and New Year's Wishes

For the holiday season, I was asked to write something "Christmasy" for the party of Little Landers Historical Society at Bolton Hall in Tujunga. I thought that a recent poem for a married couple celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary would fit it quite well, if there was a carol in the text. I chose to quote a carol that remains one of the most beloved Polish carols, cited by Fryderyk Chopin in his Scherzo in B-minor, op. 20.


Married Christmas

May your path be smooth,
and your sunlight mellow
~ an old blessing

He said
“You are the apple of my eye”
She said
“Let us have tea for two”

Steam rises from bronze liquid
freshly-baked szarlotka waits its turn
scent of cinnamon sweetens the air
the music box plays an ancient carol

Lulajze, Jezuniu, moja perelko,
Lulaj ulubione me piescidelko

She does not have to finish –
one glance and he knows
after thirty-five years together
faithful like cranes on a Chinese etching

Their looking glass is hidden away
in a box of treasures they don’t need
to find blessings
among daily crumbs of affection


The carol's text incipit means: “Hush, hush, Baby Jesus, my little pearl, my lovely little darling…” – This ancient Polish carol is a simple lullaby, filled with tender love for the infant, held in the arms of his gentle mother. There are many lullabies among Polish carols; the focus of Polish Christmas is on the baby and his mother, on the familial love that binds them. The Lulajże Jezuniu carol is sung throughout the Christmas holiday season, from Christmas Eve to February 2nd, the Candlemas.

Last year, I was traveling close to Christmas, and the empty airports were full of fake cheer, recorded Christmas carols blaring from the loudspeakers and tinsel with childish decorations everywhere. The poem I wrote about that is similar in tone to the "Married Christmas" - extolling the virtue of the subtle affection, gentle understanding of a shared life, the true family virtue...



Rules for Happy Holy Days

Don’t play Christmas carols
at the airport. Amidst the roar
of jet engines, they will spread
a blanket of loneliness
over the weary, huddled masses,
trying not to cry out for home.

Don’t put Christmas light on a poplar.
With branches swathed in white
galaxies, under yellow leaves, the tree
will become foreign, like the skeleton
of an electric fish, deep in the ocean.

Clean the windows from the ashes
of last year’s fires. Glue the wings
of a torn paper angel. Brighten
your home with the fresh scent
of pine needles and rosemary.

Take a break from chopping almonds
to brush the cheek of your beloved
with the back of your hand,
just once, gently. Smile and say:
“You look so nice, dear,
you look so nice.”


This is the poetry of a moment in the kitchen, home cooking meals of the season and sharing a togetherness and affection that is quite beyond words, yet forms the very fabric of life.

Best wishes to all my poets friends!

“Healing from the Ashes” - Poetry & Art

When Ariyana Gibbon invited us, the Village Poets, to a special poetry reading at the Healing from the Ashes exhibition she organized in Sunland to benefit the victims of Station Fire on October 17, 2010, I did not have much to show for it. I had written one haiku about wildfires in general and one poem about my experience of watching the danger approach, anxiously waiting for the wildfire to leave the slopes of my mountains, where it just sat for days on end:

FIRE TREASURES

The flames are closer and closer,
the air thick with smoke, dense
with the noise of helicopter engines.

I have never faced such danger.
Pacing around the house, I start
collecting papers, packing suitcases

of photo albums that nobody looks at,
so old, they show us two lifetimes earlier
in an antique glow of happiness.

Neighbors sit on their front porches
with binoculars, watching the spectacle
unfolding, a reality show without a screen.

They laugh and drink, eat barbecued
hamburgers and sausages saturated with
the smoky flavor of California fire season.

I can’t stand the wait. I examine the contents
of my house, gather things I cannot lose,
say farewell to those that may burn.

I give up my claim over shelves of books,
roses in gilded frames, fine china, music boxes –
my treasures become worthless bulk.

The flames shoot higher, the fire refuses
to budge under the aerial assault, stubbornly
dwells on the slopes illuminated in red at one a.m.

Next morning, my car sinks low in the driveway
under the weight of papers I packed to save.
Someone else will burn them after I’m gone.

A neighbor’s little daughter walks by,
looks at the heavy suitcases and asks,
“Mommy, is Barbie going on vacation?”

There was also a small haiku and a tanka based on mosaics from the fire that I found on the project's website:



FIRE HAIKU

wine-red sun
sinks into the ashes -
winter's fire

FIRE TANKA

red flames lick the sky
smoke thickens into darkness
a butterfly soars
ascending into turquoise
my future brightens

Not much to it, nothing tragic. It is not a surprise, then, that the Poet Laureate of our community was not the featured poet at the “Healing from the Ashes.” That title went to Jane Fontana who lived much closer to the fires and eloquently described the experience of loss and recovery. She did not lose her own home, but her neighbors did: only two houses survived on her street. Her poems were compassionate and inspired.

After walking into the exhibit on Foothill Blvd. and touring the wonderful exhibition, I was inspired, too. I was struck by the beauty and expressiveness of artwork made lovingly from remnants found in the fire – mosaics from shards of china, reliefs including burnt clocks and lamps, curio cabinets of little figurines, paintings… Our neighbors experienced real loss, and it was transformed, in that impromptu gallery, into poignant art.

On one wall was a large metal clock, burnt, with markers for the hours, but no hands. “Time stopped for this clock,” I thought as I read the title – Sun Dial by Ruth Dutoit. It spoke to me and in 10 minutes I wrote a new poem. I like the idea of a clock with no hands to show time. A French experimental filmmaker Agnes Varda made a documentary about The Gleaners, talking to those who gather and recycle things, and showcasing her own collection of her own recycled, handless, timeless clocks.

There’s a point to this. I have one clock like that at home, dark rectangular frame with mother-of-pearl inlay in the style found in India or the Middle East, it sits on my shelf to remind me of timelessness, eternity, so I would not rush around too fast, try to do too many things at once. “There’s time, there’s still time” – it tells me… Ruth Dutoit called hers The Sun Dial and there’s a small marker, or dial, on her disc, where time is measured by metal wings:

ENDLESS

The sundial glows
in a sunset of memory.

Time stops.

Dragonfly wings
freeze in a nanosecond

of fiery beauty
before evaporating.

Time stops.

We measure loss
in dragonfly wings,

in crystal shadows,
scattered wine-glasses

filled to the brim
with flames

before breaking,
before our time stops,

it too stops.



Another image that started "speaking" to me was a mosaic of a fames-spewing dragon by Robin M. Cohen. Unfortunately for the auction, it fell off its mounting on the wall and was damaged at the time of the exhibition. Cohen's mosaic was quite ornamental, almost too pretty for its materials of such tragic provenance. It resulted in a decoratively expressive, yet uncomplicated poem:

FIRE DRAGON

burn, burn, burn,
the horizon disappears
in scarlet light
burn, burn, burn
the air shimmers,
incandescent

the dragon’s here
watch the dragon
the creature of change
the beast of renewal
transforms our lives
by pain, by loss, in fear

the dragon sings out
burn, burn, burn
flames lick the rooftops
with fierce kindness
to destroy and renew
burn, burn, burn

Finally, I came across a larger artwork by the exhibition's organizer, Ariyana Gibbon. She made several mosaics on canvas for this project and one of her pieces reminded me of something I knew, both pleasurable and painful. I went home before I was able to write the following poem, stringing a necklace of tearful memories from 1975 and 1999...


FROM THE ASHES

~ to Ariyana Gibbon

The mosaic tears glow
and flow In indigo sky
crystallizing in memory
into soft petals of ash
blanketing my driveway
after the mountains
were bright with fire
for weeks, hot-spots shining
in charcoal darkness
like an ocean-liner’s lights
on the Bosphorus,
on the way to the Black Sea.

The mosaic patterns
measure space in echoes
of arabesques on the ceiling –
the Blue Mosque
in Istanbul made me
dizzy with delight.

Wait, I saw such tears elsewhere –
Oh, it was that lapis-lazuli
silver necklace I admired
in a Grand Canyon shop
He bought too late
to save what was beyond repair.

The mosaic teardrops fall,
ashen, each one shattered already,
made of old pain that does not go away,
or cry itself out. It just sits there,
a boulder on the highway
damaged by rockslide,
a burnt-out shell of a house,
lost to flames.

Shards of broken china
glow against dark velvet –
a treasure found in ashes,
held together by a thin ribbon
of gold paint, a promise of sunrise,
at the edge of indigo sky.



______________________________________________


More photos from the poetry reading at the exhibition may be found on Picasa Web Albums: http://picasaweb.google.com/Maja.Trochimczyk/SunlandHealingFromTheAshes#.

All photos and poetry reproduced here are copyrighted:(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

My Sky - A Poem of Found Images

I like seeing light in the world, permeating little things, enchanting. I notice its presence with a child's wonder, seeing the world for the first time, as if it did not exist before I looked. Raindrops on leaves are an endless fascination. There is nothing as happy as the grass, covered with dewdrop diamonds in the morning after a short summer rain.

In one old children's poem, shape-shifting clouds take the forms of endlessly changing desserts, stacks of cakes, ice-cream, whipped cream... Unlike the hungry, boy dreaming of sweets, Dyzio Marzyciel (The Dreamer), I don't see food above my head, only magic. The transformation of our world from the profane, ugly and boring to the sacred, saturated with quiet charm may happen anytime, anywhere.

In an instant, I see footsteps of the Greek goddess, Demeter, in another, I am moved to inhabit a painting... It takes just a bit of effort, after eyes are washed of the unwanted images of distress, chaos, pain. I still remember that stain of blood on the sidewalk in Venice, left after a suicide. I still see faces distorted by hate. I want to erase these memories with raindrops on rose leaves.

Some of my roses have impenetrable surfaces, keeping the raindrops round, jewel-like. Other ones absorb moisture in an instant, the drops spread out into amorphous blobs and disappear.

My life, my words, may be one or the other, visible or invisible, remembered or forgotten. I do not know what will happen when I'm gone. Now, this is my time to write, to record the beauty I discover. I am a witness to what I want to see. I could write about the rotten cans and layers of graffiti marring the landscape of the riverbed, and that rusty jeep that was sitting on the shore for years, gradually losing parts to the homeless, selling it off, bit by bit for scrap metal. OK, maybe I'll write about that jeep and the homeless. I already started, but that poem is still unfinished. Too dark, maybe? Too hopeless?

Today, it is time for something sweet. Isn't Halloween the day for treats?

MY SKY

A Poem of Found Images by Maja Trochimczyk


I live inside a painting
by Rene Magritte.


My river is made of silver,


my sunsets of tiger stripes.


I make my own rainbows.


My roses sing in the morning


to a sweet tune of water droplets


playing on the edges of leaves.


Spherical, crystal-clear globulets


of white light adorn each green surface,


like a handful of diamonds scattered


by Demeter, the goddess of plenty.


Water shines in full sunlight -


a child's memory, innocent and pure -


glistening before the breeze stirs,


droplets fall and petals begin their journey


crumbling into dust.

Poetry for an Art Auction

Do you want to know how did I end up with an enormous map of Venice waiting for its place on my wall? No? I'll tell you anyway. It is all the fault of the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance. This civic advocacy group was formed for the "No to Home Depot" campaign - one of the recent successes in the fight for self-determination in our foothill community. The group mobilized everyone else, persuaded our elected officials that they have to listen to our voices, and, despite fierce opposition of corporate interests and the efforts of their lobbyists, the community had its say.

Fast forward to September 2010. The Alliance decides to help local cultural groups and, with other local partners - artists and community activists organizes a Community Art Sale and Silent Auction to benefit three cultural institutions: McGroarty Arts Center, Bolton Hall Museum, Little Landers Historical Society. Over 60 pieces of art are available for sale including about 20 pieces from local artists and an entire collection of maps, drawings, prints, and photographs depicting such varied topics as sailboats, English manor scenes, bird's-eye maps of famous cities, caricatures, and construction scenes.

I was invited to write about the artwork on sale, but was featured at another reading on the same day, at the Flintridge Bookstore in La Canada. I could only be there for 30 minutes at the end. It was not a huge obstacle to the organizers, more a problem for me, since my favorite painting was sold by then (a landscape scene with yucca flowers in a art-deco gold frame), but I still felt I had to contribute a plem, buy an artwork and have my share in community life.

A visit to the event's website left me with short poem, about the rooster. I found the Asian-style image inspiring, for I'm a Rooster myself (in the Chinese Zodiac), as vain about my appearance as the painted bird:



The Rooster

© 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Crowned with red
I admire black feathers
of my silky tail

I wake up at night
to proudly crow about
my strong beak and talons

Buyer beware


The rest of the images on the site somehow did not make sense, I could not figure out what it was all about until I saw an album of photographs of the entire collection, donated to be sold anonymously and benefit Sunland-Tujunga's cultural organizations. Painter and activist Debby Beck brought the album to local Starbucks where I had a revelation! Pages and pages of hunt scenes, pages and pages of boats, pages and pages of workers soldering steel beams, pages and pages of maps... I was hooked and found my way into the imagery, capturing my impressions in free verse:


Dreaming of Elsewhere
© 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Red jackets shine against dark green foliage
of English copse and hedge.
Over the hill and dale ride the hunters.
Tally ho… Tally ho… hounds bark,
their voices echo through the fields
on a frosty morning.



Steam boats wait to take explorers
to the South Seas, Tahiti, Argentina.
White sails barely flutter in the breeze,
stiff and proud on the tall ships
of her Majesty, the Queen.

The West Australian,
The East Indian, Sultana,
The Kestrel – all are ready
for adventure, to circle the world,
conquer foreign lands,
bring back the gold of El Dorado.

Dreamers dreaming dreams –

We are at the edge of the ocean,
blue and deep, it stretches
to Japan we seldom think about
here, in the Far West
of Pacific Rim, Terra Incognita.

The lay of the land is clear
on antique maps, straight
from paintings by Vermeer –
only the milkmaid’s missing,
and the pearl. Canals, islands,
and church towers of Venice,
evenly measured empty blocks
of Atlanta, chaos of streets
crowded like children
at a Los Angeles fiesta,
and the mysterious labyrinth
of Boston, carved from sea,
sliced away from water.

Why Boston? Why so much Boston?
Is there a secret to this Eastern city
that explains Californian sun?



We do not hunt foxes in jackets
redder than their fur. We do not
wait for the sailboats and steamships
to take us where we do not belong.
We measure the lay of our land
in cypress, sycamore and live oak,
with the scent of sage shimmering
in summer heat above dried chaparral,
with star jasmine and orange blossoms
sweetening our winter gardens.

We are not going anywhere –
not to New York to construct
the tallest buildings of heavy steel,
not to an English manor
where silver is polished weekly,
and the butler serves tea
and scones at five o’clock.
Tally-ho…Tally-ho…

Dreamers dreaming dreams –

We are here, longing for
elsewhere. Shall we ever
catch foxes eating fruit
in our vineyards? Shall we
find ourselves in lands distant,
exotic, unknown?



The sailboats and steamships sailed away to distant shores; the maps and small pieces found their way to people's dreams. The center, museum and society counted and shared the donations. I was left in Venice, a six-foot-long, mahogany-framed detailed map of Venice - the magic city I dream of visiting again.

In Praise, Awe of the Mountains

Poetic inspiration comes from outside - the world - and inside - reflections and emotions. For me, being very sensitive to shapes and colors and the beauty of nature. California mountains are a major inspiration. I come from Poland which is a flat-country, with a small area of mountains in the south (the Tatras at the northernmost tip of Carpatian Mountains), some hilly terrain in the Foothills, and then flat all the way to the Baltic Sea. Fields, meadows and copses have their allure, the bigness of the sky above, if you walk out away from buildings, is astounding. The skylark's song falls on the ground like a rain of little bells. You do not even see the singer so high above your head...


But to live in California means to live in the mountains. Los Angeles has a bad rap internationally, as the city of crime, car chases, barbed wire, and graffiti. Nobody tells us before we come here of the amazing gardens, hills and mountains: San Gabriels, Santa Monica, Verdugo Hills... They criss-cross the terrain, so that everywhere we go we'd see something beautiful and breathtaking.

I live in the foothills, watch the mountains from my kitchen window, go for long walks in the dry river-bed of Tujunga Wash admiring the ever-changing colors and shapes of the mountains. Being aware that there are no cities for a while and they stretch for miles into the desert is a part of the allure of our little hermitage.

Interlude – Of the Mountains

I.

I love you, my mountains,
oranged into sunset
of embarrassment.

Your cheeks aglow –
what sin you’re hiding,
in waterless creases,
what guilt?

Or is it first love
that makes you shine
with such glory?


The sunlight in California is so different from northern areas of Canada, or Poland. There it is pale, often grayish, frail. Here it brings a rainbow of colors to everything it touches. Everything is more vivid, more intense, under the bright rays, in summer or winter...

II.

Bare mountains –
no – old grassy hills
worn out by wind
and torrential rains
shine in stark morning light
like exquisite folds
of red-brown velvet
covered with stardust.

Snow whitens the slopes
sculpted by crevices.

The earth sighs
in her sleep.


When my mother came to visit in 1999, she thought that these mountains, without a protective layer of trees, all exposed to the elements, looked like heaps of dought and still bore imprints of the giants' hands. I liked that image so much, I put it into a poem.

III.

I’ll never tire of these mountains
made from the earth’s dough
by the hands of a giant
who kneaded a cake
that was never finished,
the dough left in piles
on the table of smooth fields
surprised by their sudden end
in rich folds and falls
decorated with the icing of snow
on cloudy winter mornings.


The sunsets are astounding and the skies glow. It is the clearest and the most spectacular in the winter, after the rain washes away the smog. But the fire-season knows its glories, too, the darker, wine-read hues. The next part of my Interlude, from Miriam's Iris (Moonrise Press, 2008), was actually inspired by a memory of looking at a different set of mountains, rocks falling apart in the Monument Valley.

IV. (A Monument of Time)

Submerged in the sand of time,
a continent from beyond
sinks in the last sunset.

Shadows move briskly.
Soon, a gentle coat of oblivion
will cover the ridges.

The desert sleeps
devouring life.
Clocks stop.

The rocks are on fire
boiling over
into the evening sky.

Sand rises slowly.
The mountains drown
in silence.

The pastels can be seen in January, our spring. With clouds, like scarves on the hilltops, with fresh greenery of new grass on the slopes, the mountains are ready for a party. I put that last poem on a postcard I printed, with the photo above, for my participation in the 2010 Fourth of July Parade of Sunland-Tujunga. I gave them out to everyone at the parade and still do giveaways from time to time. A cute little trifle, just to make your day a fresher/newer day....

Interlude - Of Bliss

II.

I’m delighted
with newness of this day –
fresh, new grass and
fresh, new leaves and
fresh, new clouds
in fresh, new sky
Washed clean by rainfall,
colored by ever-brighter light
of green and blue,
hope and innocence,
the hues of my love.
Even the mountains wear
their fresh, new dresses
with pleats of ridges and gullies
waiting to be ironed out
by the breath of wind and time.

But the mountains are temperamental, they shake, they burn, they fall apart. Living in their shadow is like living with an elephant in the room, or a giant rhinoceros in the backyard. The danger and beauty are celebrated in my occasional poem for An Award Ceremony for community volunteers who helped with January floods, organized by City Councilman Paul Krekorian. Called three days before the ceremony, I came up with the following poem. I now adapted it to the fire season, for the nature of the danger may change, but the threat remains.

Mountain Watch

They are a bit vain, aren’t they
these mountains of ours, still young.
They like being washed by the rain,
making themselves pretty for sunset.
Wet soil turns into a mudbath
for these giant beauties.

When they stretch and practice
their dance moves, our houses crumble.
Water jumps out of toilet bowls.
Aunt Rosie’s favorite crystal vase
shatters on the floor. The mountains
shake boulders out of their skirts,
lose weight. Rocks slide into our backyards.

We stand watch. We are ready.
Neighbor calls neighbor: “Are you OK?”
A friend you did not know you had
stops by. The danger looms.

In ancient Rome, guards had to hold
one hand up, with the finger on their lips
in a sign of silence, attention. I read
about it in a book, standing on my shelf,
in a crowded row of treasures
I hauled across the ocean, from the
old country to an unknown world.
I’d hate losing them to mud.

When the mountains dress in red
robes of fire, to dance in the night
rites of destruction, sometimes
it is too late for treasures. An old man
lost a hundred years of memories,
when his family heirlooms –
pictures, tchotchkes – burned to ashes.
His life spared, he still cries for what
he cannot not bring back.

We are lucky. Storms came and went.
The neighbors lived, the houses survived.
We were ready: moved out, moved in,
moved out, moved in, awakened
at midnight, sheltered by the goodwill
of unknown friends. We watched.
The storms passed. This was a good year.
We will watch. The aging beauties
will dance again.


Maja Trochimczyk and Paul Krekorian at the Awards Ceremony, June 2010.

_____________________________

All content, poetry and photos (C) by Maja Trochimczyk, 2010.
Mountain poems were all published in Maja Trochimczyk, Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden, Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2008.
Mountain Watch was published in The Voice of the Village, July 2010.